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Thanks for writing these comments. I think you're doing a better job of attempting empathy than the people criticizing Adria for not showing enough. :)

> Personally I can't see how the joke is threatening, but I can't dismiss her feelings over this just because I find it tough — or even impossible — to imagine.

The same Adria who herself made penis jokes on twitter a few days earlier and who was playing Cards Against Humanity at the same PyCon conference?

What happened to her is shameful and can't be condoned in any way, shape or form, but she engaged in the same (or some would say worse) behavior that she was criticizing Hank for. Double standards much?

>Perhaps you are right in perceiving a lack of empathy.... I think it's because she is viewing Hank as an oblivious part of a system which puts her at a significant disadvantage.

That's the definition of lack of empathy, Hank clearly expressed empathy for her, she didn't even consider the possibility that her public shaming could have serious consequences.

By the way, I believe she was in her right to complain about the joke to the organizers in private, it's the public tweet with the photo that crossed the line.

Twitter isn't a professional setting like a conference session, and anyone joining in a game of CAH is deliberately opting-in to a situation where offensively funny combinations are the entire point of the game.

Twitter is way worse, it is a public forum, with thousands of followers and she used her account as an official representative of her company. (in a PR kind of capacity even.)

The dongle comment was a conversation between two people, it was not private, but it's audience was intended to be limited to two individuals.

The CAH game could offend someone that passed by (it was played in a hallway), what would have happened if someone took a picture of her playing CAH and tweeted "Not Cool Guys/Gals"and made a blog post about feeling treated at PyCon?

https://instagram.com/p/W_A1xlAacg/

On the other hand they can't go around claiming to have a deep seating sensitivity to offenses -- the image she was trying to portray. That she was just shaking in fear of being murdered because of a dongle joke.

She is misrepresenting her character and manipulates the public image of herself to stir controversy, drama, and in turns she actually hurting the cause she claims to champion. If anything that is the thing I don't like about what she did the most.

> On the other hand they can't go around claiming to have a deep seating sensitivity to offenses.

Why not? I can be scared of ax-wielding murderers while still enjoying a haunted house where people in an ax-murderer costume jump out at me.

You expect offensive stuff in a CAH game. You don't expect it being mumbled behind you during a keynote.

>You expect offensive stuff in a CAH game. You don't expect it being mumbled behind you during a keynote. //

She chose to be offended. There was nothing inherently offensive about the comment as it's reported. It was apparently a private comment to a friend.

If I'm eavesdropping on some friends talking amongst themselves then I'd expect to hear all sorts of crass lewdness TBH. If I then choose to be offended perhaps the lookout is on me, that I should stop eavesdropping other's conversations.

The situation at hand — to borrow your metaphor — is like someone coming out of a haunted house, seeing someone across the street dressed as an axe-murderer (but clearly in fancy-dress), then crossing the street to harangue them because one should know axe-murderers frighten them and that some how the happenstance of your co-locality gives them the right to control over your attire.

If you don't like the content of private conversations that you can overhear, as an adult, in a public setting, then your choices are to put up with it, move out of earshot, or ask the people to censor themselves.

"She chose to be offended. There was nothing inherently offensive about the comment as it's reported. It was apparently a private comment to a friend."

She chose how to act on the offense she took, and she chose irresponsibly. She chose how to handle the aftermath, and she chose questionably. But she didn't "choose" to be offended in the first place. That's a bridge too far. She was listening to a keynote presentation about women in technology, overheard some sex jokes being made during that presentation, and took offense to the jokes, perhaps especially in light of the context and the timing.

Now, I find her described rationale for the offense she took (fear of violence) a little extreme. But who am I to judge her feelings? I'm not a woman, and I am certainly not the survivor of what sounds like a horrifyingly abusive household. I have no basis by which to speak from those perspectives, and so I can't summarily dismiss them as invalid. That's not my call to make. That's not my place.

I don't agree with her actions, and I find her lack of apparent remorse very disturbing. But I don't presume to set some universal, male-perspective standard for what is or is not offensive to people. I can see how the jokes could have offended any hypothetical women in earshot at the time, and perhaps some men as well. I personally would not have been offended, but I am not every person. My perspective on what's offensive and what isn't is not the de facto norm.

Completely agree, however, that the more mature course of action would have been to confront the jokesters in person, or move away, or perhaps just lodge a complaint with the PyCon organizers. The public shaming was uncalled for, and it had disproportionately drastic consequences for all concerned.

I know people disagree with me frequently on this, but most conferences aren't professional settings either. You register and you go, that's the criteria. And people do a lot of "unprofessional" things at and around them.

Code of conduct for 2013 US Pycon

https://us.pycon.org/2013/about/code-of-conduct/

> All communication should be appropriate for a professional audience including people of many different backgrounds. Sexual language and imagery is not appropriate for any conference venue, including talks.

> Be kind to others. Do not insult or put down other attendees. Behave professionally. Remember that harassment and sexist, racist, or exclusionary jokes are not appropriate for PyCon.

> All communication should be appropriate for a professional audience including people of many different backgrounds. Sexual language and imagery is not appropriate for any conference venue, including talks.

That does really not fit well with playing CAH...

I was wrong about PyCon, but I stand by my position that these events aren't actually treated as purely "professional" even if there are minimum standards of behavior. People wouldn't go if they were. But she wasn't playing Cards Against Humanity _at_ PyCon. Arguably because she represented Sendgrid, she should have been more professional on her Twitter, though.

"But she wasn't playing Cards Against Humanity _at_ PyCon."

Uhh... scroll up:

https://instagram.com/p/W_A1xlAacg/

Caption on that picture, by @adriarichards, "Playing, Cards Against Humanity, #pycon" (And that picture is a hallway at the venue).

Well, shit. But I guess that proves my point. These things aren't actually treated as professional events.

Oh but she was.

Yes, they are. Where were they playing CAH? Oh, at "a professional setting like a conference" (not in a session, certainly).

Did they seek the approval of others around who weren't playing, and ensured that they felt emotionally safe?

I somehow doubt it.

Cards Against Humanity details - http://s3.amazonaws.com/cah/CAH_MainGame.pdf (full download of game cards).

NSFW!?!

You claim it's histrionics, but it might be real things she is feeling. What if she really felt this way?

Her feelings being real don't make them acceptable or reasonable. Take the below example.

http://reason.com/blog/2015/02/19/male-student-banned-from-c...

I just want to say that, although I don't fully agree with you, I really appreciate you chiming in with your thoughts on this. It's given me plenty to think about.

In the event that you are right, and she's really being sincere, then I hope she gets help to work through her issues. Especially over the parts about her childhood at the end.

> I think it's because she is viewing Hank as an oblivious part of a system which puts her at a significant disadvantage

Yes, but the "system" isn't in any way Hank's doing, nor Hank's fault, and is no justification for a dismissal of empathy.

Thank you, I appreciate this discussion with you too.

I often wonder what my reaction to these sorts of articles would be if the genders were reversed. And I find that I more quickly and easily empathise with males, which makes me wary that perhaps my feelings when reading these articles are not completely rational.

I believe both parties did something thoughtless, Adria more so than Hank, but the anger here and how we vilify Adria is so different to how we talk about Hank. It's almost like she's not even human, just some delusional sociopath filled with hatred. I imagine if I were a woman reading this thread I would feel very excluded.

There are a lot of idiot trolls on the internet saying all sorts of ridiculous things. Usually it's better to just ignore them.

> To her it's not 800+ people, it's 800+ men where you are one of the few women. That's not something I can say I've ever experienced. Personally I can't see how the joke is threatening, but I can't dismiss her feelings over this just because I find it tough — or even impossible — to imagine.

I think there's a reality here outside of anyone's feelings, which is that the jokes mentioned in the article are neither sexist nor threatening. If she feels attacked or threatened, well, that's her problem.

To be clear, I do believe there is plenty of sexism in the software industry. If there's a joke that we don't know about that Hank made which was actually sexist, then I'm happy he got fired, and I don't think Adria was overreacting. But if the jokes in the article are the full story, then she wasn't even overreacting--she was reacting to something which she shouldn't have reacted to at all. The jokes aren't sexist.

> You claim it's histrionics, but it might be real things she is feeling. What if she really felt this way? Shouldn't we try to understand Adria as well as we understand Hank? By dismissing her so easily we make our field more exclusive. We say, "I can't imagine that so you mustn't have experienced it. It's not a problem because I can't see it."

She probably does feel that way. I have no reason to doubt that she feels the way she says she feels. But just because someone feels threatened doesn't mean their feelings are right. Certainly there are people who would be threatened by a black woman at a conference: and those people can go fuck themselves. It takes more than someone feeling threatened to justify firing someone. I'd have to see some joke that they made which was actually sexist or threatening.

> I think there's a reality here outside of anyone's feelings, which is that the jokes mentioned in the article are neither sexist nor threatening. If she feels attacked or threatened, well, that's her problem.

I think that's a bad attitude and it puts people off who might want to join us.

If she feels threatened by an innocuous joke, which seems to be the case, then we need to take a serious look at why that is. What is it about PyCon that can make a woman feel like this, and how can we help?

In my mind she and Hank are both fairly intelligent, rational people. It's not normal for her to have felt this way and I don't blame her for experiencing that.

> doesn't mean their feelings are right

But she's not a crazy person, she was a developer evangelist for a well known company. She was well spoken and calm. Her response to Hank's original Hacker News comment was quite pleasant and seemed to acknowledge that bad situations can happen even though Hank is a good guy.

Yet she felt threatened by an innocuous joke because of the atmosphere of the conference, because she was vastly outnumbered, and because we are unwilling to address this. We are unwilling even to take her feelings seriously, even for a moment. Almost everyone here dismisses them out-of-hand, how is that attractive or inclusive?

> I think that's a bad attitude and it puts people off who might want to join us.

I do not think that the solution to the gender imbalance in tech is to stop calling spades spades. The jokes made were not threatening or sexist, and if she felt threatened, her feelings were not justified.

Women are just as capable of reasoning as men, but they're also just as capable of being wrong. There are real sexism issues to address in the software industry. At a conference a few years ago, a coworker of mine was followed back to her hotel room by a drunk conference attendee--THAT is sexist and threatening. At a Ruby conference, a presenter showed slides of women in bikinis and made lewd comments about them--THAT is sexism. I don't think inventing a sexism issue where there isn't one does anything to solve the real problems.

To be clear: I do think that it is productive to look at what the software industry is doing wrong in relation to women. All I'm saying is that this particular instance is a red herring.

> It's not normal for her to have felt this way and I don't blame her for experiencing that.

I don't blame her either, but I don't think there's any conclusions to be drawn from how she felt. She just was wrong. People are wrong all the time.

> But she's not a crazy person, she was a developer evangelist for a well known company. She was well spoken and calm. Her response to Hank's original Hacker News comment was quite pleasant and seemed to acknowledge that bad situations can happen even though Hank is a good guy.

One can be sane, gainfully employed, well-spoken, and calm, and still wrong. I think any sane, gainfully employed, well-spoken, calm person will freely admit that they have been wrong many times.

> Yet she felt threatened by an innocuous joke because of the atmosphere of the conference, because she was vastly outnumbered, and because we are unwilling to address this.

What about the atmosphere of the conference made her feel threatened? If there was something that happened at the conference which was actually threatening, that is the problem, not these jokes. If there is threatening behavior going on, I'd love to figure out a way to stop it. But jokes about dongles and forking repos are not threatening behavior, and pretending they are does nothing to solve anything.

Yes, she's vastly outnumbered. That is a well-known problem which I would like to solve, but I think that will require coming up with solutions, not just telling people they're right when they aren't.

I don't think we are unwilling to address this, I think we HAVE addressed this. Just because people don't agree with her doesn't mean they aren't listening.

> Almost everyone here dismisses them out-of-hand, how is that attractive or inclusive?

Sure, we can lower our standards to include people who can't differentiate between something threatening and something non-threatening, and that might allow us to hire more women. But that would defeat the purpose. Women are just as capable as men and we can include them without lowering our standards.

Pretending women are right when they're wrong is not the way to be inclusive.

Once she said she had no regret for him getting fired, and that it was ok because he was a white male, any sympathy that could have been had was gone.

She's like the white man who shot the black kids in Florida because he was threatened by their loud music.

I don't think your analogy applies here. I'd liken the situation more to stealing a CD from a record store. The CD's are easily replaced, but you were caught and now you're serving life in prison.

Even though we know that stealing is wrong, would you feel bad for the record store?

I'm saying she's borderline mentally ill, perceiving threats that don't exist from offense she takes from immature comments.

> I think it's because she is viewing Hank as an oblivious part of a system which puts her at a significant disadvantage.

Isn't that the definition of empathy? She sees Hank not as a person, but just as a part of a system, never thinks of the consequences her actions have on him, never even considers that he is going through some rough times, and that he (as a person, a human being) sometimes makes a mistake and then apologizes...